A.J.'s best chance is if the GM feels they need to free up salary cap space. Dalton's getting paid a ton.
If they decide he's not the answer to get them to a Super Bowl, they may let him go.
It happens every day in the NFL.
It's not about making the playoffs, it's about winning once you get there.
That is a possibility, but that doesnt usually warrant trying to make AJ the future either (like some people think). Most teams that do that usually do that kinda of transitions at the end of the year to secure draft picks to get the next qb.
The qbs that were in AJ's predicament of being selected late (Brady,Marino,Theisman, Starr, and Staubach) all had experience under their belt with coaches with job security. While you might disagree about Tom Brady because Bill Belichick hadnt really proven that he was an elite coach until 2001; also consider that the Krafts are like the Roonys and the Maras at they fire only if they way way way underpreform (Rust 1990). Plus Bledsoe went down and Brady was fighting like a man possesed to get to the #1 spot from being the #199th pick overall starting on the practice squad to get there.
Point is Shula (Marino),Landry (Stauhbach),Lombardi (Starr), and Bill (Brady) had coaches that either had understandable circumstances or were already looked as elite coaches. The only anomaly to this arguement was theisman, but he himself was a known name in the CFL like Kurt Warner was in Arena Football.
That brings us to Marvin Lewis and AJ. The common thought for along time (the biggest reason he has been there so long) is that Marvin was a great coach who suffered a bad bounce of fate when Carson Palmer went down in the 2005 Wild Card Game with an ACL injury. Carson hasnt been the same since. Then when the Steelers and Ravens went down to Earth after Super Bowl XLIII, the rumblings started happening and the only thing that saved him was a 2009 North Championship. But the rumblings started again after an abysmal 2010 season, but has since been silenced since 4 straight playoff apperances with Andy behind center. Marvin doesnt have the luxury of risking a qb change out of the blue for a qb with no experience to replace the qb that is keeping his job security intact. Plus the rap on AJ is well known: that he is cocky, he has had some of the best offensive lines at his disposal at Alabama, and that since the draft he has been injured.
I understand why people on here WANT AJ to win the job, but the reality is that it would almost take an act of God, or an untimely injury or catastrophic slump for him to do so.